office 2013 Office 2013: Annoying things

[Ambroos]

Hello!

I was just trying out Office 2013, been playing with it for a while. Aside the fact that it seems to be (much) slower than Office 2010 everything seems about okay. One thing that annoys me slightly is the cursor animation, it makes me feel like I'm a slow typist even though I'm absolutely not.

One huge thing I absolutely hate right now is the inability to choose another color for the user interface. The white is WAY too bright, especially when it fills your entire display. It's extremely uncomfortable to work with and it makes your page drown in the user interface - especially on bigger displays. I don't have it installed anymore, but the black theme in 2010 was really comfortable to work in, putting the focus completely on your content. But now everything is white, and there is no way to change it.

[.Neo]

The white is WAY too bright, especially when it fills your entire display.

Simply don't maximize the window on a screen that big then.

[Tom]

I just saw the Office logos and made this to illustrate what was in my head.

[Tarvis123]

One huge thing I absolutely hate right now is the inability to choose another color for the user interface. The white is WAY too bright, especially when it fills your entire display. It's extremely uncomfortable to work with and it makes your page drown in the user interface - especially on bigger displays.

I thoroughly agree with this. It felt like it was straining my eyes as soon as Word opened. I really hope there is eventually a way to change this natively or 3rd party.

[.Neo]

And now they're boats or filled containers:

[Tom]

And now they're boats or filled containers:

I did this immediately after and lol'd.

[Charisma Veteran]

And not to nitpick, but why did he say the ribbon was off by default when it is not?

The whiteness. Oh, the whiteness.

[Harrison H.]

And not to nitpick, but why did he say the ribbon was off by default when it is not?

The whiteness. Oh, the whiteness.

I think it actually is off by default. The reason I think we're not seeing it like that is we've all probably had 2010 already on our systems. A clean user profile will probably have it unpinned.

[Noir Angel]

They open very quickly for me but I can't say I'm in love with the UI at all. It's horribly bland and the lack of gradients means it just seems to mash together.

[f0rk_b0mb]

yeah i agree there is way too much white space. They need to make it a nice light gray around the document like what they did in publisher.

[ArialBlue]

I see your point

[djdanster]

They open very quickly for me but I can't say I'm in love with the UI at all. It's horribly bland and the lack of gradients means it just seems to mash together.

Agree completely. Although I think it's to do with the whole metro style. It just doesn't fit with how they've done it.

Going a bit offtopic but kind of not.... The metro stylings used really does remind me of Windows 3.1. I'm not trolling so don't say I am; it just really does seem like it.

[Detection]

They open very quickly for me but I can't say I'm in love with the UI at all. It's horribly bland and the lack of gradients means it just seems to mash together.

Yea I agree, feels like the theme service crashed and left a classic ui

[jakem1]

And not to nitpick, but why did he say the ribbon was off by default when it is not?

The ribbon is off by default in touch-mode.

The whiteness. Oh, the whiteness.

I like it :)

[+Ryster Subscriber²]

If you're document is so small that you have that much "white space" around it, isn't that just a sign that you're either zoomed out too much, or your window size is too large?

That said, when I first opened Outlook, the "flatness" and "whiteness" of it all did take a few minutes of getting used to. But I think I like it now.

[Larry the Lobster]

The more I see of the direction Microsoft is going, the more I dislike the new stuff. I shall not feel the need to rush forward with this.

[Noir Angel]

Agree completely. Although I think it's to do with the whole metro style. It just doesn't fit with how they've done it.

Going a bit offtopic but kind of not.... The metro stylings used really does remind me of Windows 3.1. I'm not trolling so don't say I am; it just really does seem like it.

Yeah, I have no doubt that is true. Microsoft's UI designers seem to me to be churning out one disappointment after another at the moment it would seem.

[simplezz]

I'd have to put on my :geek: to use that lol

[Calum Veteran]

I think I need to give it a chance and use it regularly before I judge the amount of whiteness, and I recommend others do the same.

[Brian Miller]

It really does look ugly!

[chrisj1968]

if you have an earlier version of office on your system, you'll have to de-install this beta version. it wouldn't allow me to run my outlook 2007. must be some conflict

[rfirth]

I was just trying out Office 2013, been playing with it for a while. Aside the fact that it seems to be (much) slower than Office 2010 everything seems about okay.

That's weird. Office 2010 is slower than Office 2013 on my machine. Office 2013 is very fast here.

One thing that annoys me slightly is the cursor animation, it makes me feel like I'm a slow typist even though I'm absolutely not.

Explain.

One huge thing I absolutely hate right now is the inability to choose another color for the user interface

Yep, I looked around for that option too and couldn't find it.

I like Office 2013 a lot, but I do wish there was a little more contrast. That's all I would ask for.

What's really cool, though, is the consistency between Office 2013 and Visual Studio 2012. They now look like they were made by the same company. There are small differences, but they are very similar.

I think I need to give it a chance and use it regularly before I judge the amount of whiteness, and I recommend others do the same.

I agree. I think I like Office 2013 because I have grown used to the style... it's the same style that Visual Studio 2012 uses.

if you have an earlier version of office on your system, you'll have to de-install this beta version. it wouldn't allow me to run my outlook 2007. must be some conflict

You might find some conflicts in some circumstances, but it should work. I have Office 2010 working just fine alongside Office 2013.

[Lee G. Veteran]

My first impressions are similar to Ambroos', but as Calum has said, I'll need to use it regularly before I can develop a reasonable opinion.

if you have an earlier version of office on your system, you'll have to de-install this beta version. it wouldn't allow me to run my outlook 2007. must be some conflict

Thankfully it hasn't affected my installation of Office 2010.

[+Ryster Subscriber²]

If you have an Office app open full screen like that, then why wouldn't you also have the document full screen. I've fixed Ambroos' image a bit to illustrate my point. It's nowhere near as "white" if your set your window size to something more appropriate to the document you are viewing.

I agree the grey (and it is grey, although a very light grey) behind the document could be darkened a bit to better differentiate between the "paper" and the app background. Perhaps something like this...

[Charisma Veteran]

I think it actually is off by default. The reason I think we're not seeing it like that is we've all probably had 2010 already on our systems. A clean user profile will probably have it unpinned.

Ah, fair point.

The ribbon is off by default in touch-mode.

There ya go. I knew he said something about that.

It is awfully bright--I know some like that, but I'm a Darkside/dark background type. A lot easier on my eyes :) I know when I first installed 2007 or 2010 for some users, their first question was how to change the light blue to something more demure.

Again... come on, stop taking away our options... I want to like this!

[Ambroos]

That's weird. Office 2010 is slower than Office 2013 on my machine. Office 2013 is very fast here.

...

Explain.

About the speed issue: opening things is much slower for me. And sometimes things don't react instantly, as if they're waiting to see if you're going to make some other gesture. Scrolling, moving things around, ... All feels less smooth. And in PowerPoint from time to time it takes over 10 seconds for a slide to load when clicked on it in the slide strip on the left, even almost empty slides. And a lot of text in PowerPoint types very slow since it seems to want to render them with all the shading right away. Feels like you're typing in Photoshop. But I'll give it to them that this is a beta/preview and I hope those things will get ironed out. (like the bug where when you open documents the window gets pushed completely to the background)

The typing then, the cursor doesn't instantly move to it's new position after the letter you just typed, instead it gradually moves there over a short period of time. This sort of gives me the impression I'm typing too slow. And it is quite distracting, even though I'd have to give it more time to form a proper judgement on that.

And about the theme, I know I shouldn't maximize one-page documents, and usually I roll with two documents side by side or two pages side by side. But the issue remains that because everything is just white with very faint borders, you lose overview. You can no longer glance at your screen to have an approximate idea of where something is located in your user interface because everything looks the same. In other Metro apps this problem is much less apparent because they have different font sizes everywhere. In Office and Visual Studio they seem to not want to increase font size but decided to go with the ALL CAPS APPROACH, which makes me feel like my computer is shouting at me. Even though nothing in the ribbon changed place in Word it still had me looking for features longer than it took me in 2010 or 2007.